Given the recent comments from coach Miron Bleiberg and the unpredictability of owner Clive Palmer, it's time for Football Federation Australia to prepare the A-League for life post-Gold Coast United, if they weren't doing so already.
Even if Palmer intends to continue supporting the club beyond the 2011/12 season (seems unlikely, to say the least), the result of the mass-exodus of leading players could be the final nail in the coffin. If they could only average 3434 fans per home game with the likes of Culina, Smeltz, Djite, van den Brink, Anderson and co taking them to third place, what crowd can they attract with what will essentially be a youth team?
In all likelihood, therefore, the 2011/12 season could well be the last for Gold Coast United, who will join fellow expansion club North Queensland Fury on the scrap heap.
The A-League would then be left with nine clubs and, importantly, just one in Queensland - correcting the terrible imbalance that saw three clubs in the third most populous state.
Does further expansion then get shelved to consolidate what's left, or does the governing body act quickly to get in a tenth club to replace Gold Coast United?
Commonsense would suggest consolidating; working with the nine remaining clubs and strengthening them as the FFA rides out this difficult fiscal period in the lead-up to the next television deal.
But I'd argue the FFA would desperately need to replace Gold Coast and get the competition back up to ten teams.
Why? Critically there remains a massive football community out in western Sydney that needs to be brought into the A-League; working with the host of grassroots clubs in the region, connecting those football communities with the A-League.
Forget the farcical Sydney Rovers stillborn franchise, which was poorly conceived and developed by the FFA and club officials, and was not an indication of a lack of football interest from the region.
It remains one of the great oversights in the A-League's birth and development that the region has no professional representative. It just needs to be done properly by the FFA, harnessing significant support from those football communities.
As the expansion to the Gold Coast and to a lesser extent North Queensland highlighted, the A-League needs to expand in regions where there are deep-rooted and significant numbers of grassroots football communities, as well as all the fiscal requirements to ensure the club can be supported.
As Melbourne Heart showed in their first season, expansion A-League clubs can be sustained where there is a highly populated football community. Heart pulled double the average crowd of both Gold Coast United and North Queensland despite, as I've stressed before, the limitations of no differentiation with the Victory in a city in which the Victory owned exclusively for five seasons. They could do so because there is a significant football community with a passion for the game in Melbourne, as there is in western Sydney.
A western Sydney A-League club would have a geographical differentiation to Sydney FC. If the former were based in Parramatta or Blacktown, it would force Sydney FC to concentrate its attention on its city surrounds, thus potentially giving the directionless club the chance to finally settle on an identity via a specified presence in the city.
It would also give the A-League a second derby and rivalry. Watch the three Melbourne derbies again and consider the potential of Sydney derby, which, as opposed to the Melbourne version, will have a genuine differentiation.
On the horizon in the region is the Greater Western Sydney Giants AFL club, backed with the AFL's millions (around $200 million), while the NRL remains the region's showcase league. But don't ignore those football communities, who should be the lifeblood of the A-League's tenth club post-Gold Coast.
A ten-team competition just works. An uneven amount of teams means clubs are stuck with byes, which hurts their ability to gain traction and attention in an already hidden league.
Yes, the FFA's budget is limited and this hardly seems the time to reconsider expansion. But with North Queensland off the books, the basket case Gold Coast United on their way out, and once Brisbane Roar are offloaded, then surely there needs to be a commitment from the governing body to genuinely address the absence of a team in football's heartland... done properly, this time.
Bring in a western Sydney club and then consolidate around ten teams, not nine. The A-League will finally look like it should've from day one with two teams in Melbourne and two in Sydney.
